Waiting to buy your travel insurance
Travel insurance plans that offer coverage for pre-existing medical conditions offer the coverage at no additional cost1 but they do have 3 or more preconditions that you must meet in order to qualify for the coverage. The most common ones are:
- Requires that the insurance be purchased within a very specific amount of time following your first trip payment(deposit)2. Depending on the plan, that period of time varies from 10 to 30 days.
- You must be physically able to travel when buying the insurance.
- You must insure to the full value of the non-refundable portion of your trip.
Whether or not you qualify for pre-existing coverage depends on you meeting all of these conditions. Failure to meet all of them will mean that you won't be covered for a pre-existing medical condition. If you qualify for pre-existing coverage is determined at the time of a claim based on the documents that you submit with your claim to the insurance company. Pre-existing conditions are the foremost reason why claims are declined. Qualifying for the “waiver” will eliminate the travel insurance company from using that as an excuse to deny a claim.
1 Travel insurance companies offer this coverage as an inducement to buy the insurance early as they believe that they will pay fewer claims if you buy the insurance early.
2 Your deposit date is the very first time you made a payment for your specific trip. Most companies use that date to start the clock however, there is at least one company that use your final payment date as the deadline to buy the insurance and to qualify for the pre-existing conditions coverage.
